Speakers
AbstractDr. Michael C. MacCracken
Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute
Michael MacCracken is Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington, DC. His activities focus on improving understanding of climate change and its impacts and outreach efforts focused on extending public understanding. In addition to his association with the Climate Institute, Dr. MacCracken is president of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) for the period 2003-2007. As president of IAMAS, he also serves on the executive committees of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research (SCOR). He is also a member of the Scientific Expert Group (SEG) on Climate Change and Sustainable Development being convened under the auspices of the scientific research society Sigma Xi for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to consider optimal measures for mitigating and adapting to global climate change, and the review editor of the chapter on North America for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. MacCracken is also a member of the National Advisory Panel, Aspen Climate Change Assessment, and from 2002-2005, he was a member of the integration team for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
Dr. MacCracken received his B.S. in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1964 and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Science from the University of California Davis/Livermore in 1968. His dissertation used a 2-D climate model to evaluate the plausibility of several hypotheses of the causes of ice ages. Following his graduate work, Dr. MacCracken joined the Physics Department of the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as an atmospheric physicist. His research in the ensuing 25 years included numerical modeling of various causes of climate change (including study of the potential climatic effects of greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, land-cover change, and nuclear war) and of factors affecting air quality (including photochemical pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area and sulfate air pollution in the northeastern United States). At LLNL, he also served as division leader for atmospheric and geophysical sciences from 1987-1993 and as deputy division leader from 1974-1987.
In 1993, Dr. MacCracken accepted an assignment from LLNL to the interagency Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) in Washington, DC, where he was senior global change scientist and the first executive director of the Office, serving until 1997. In this position, he was responsible for promoting a coordinated research program among the ten federal research agencies studying climate change, ozone depletion, and other aspects of global change. From 1997-2001, he served as executive director of the USGCRP’s National Assessment Coordination Office, which coordinated the efforts of 20 regional assessment teams, 5 sectoral teams, and the National Assessment Synthesis Team that prepared the national level reports that were forwarded to the President and on to the Congress. He also served as the coordinating author for the chapter dealing with the impacts of climate change that was included in the official U.S. Government’s 2002 submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. During this period with the Office of the USGCRP, Dr. MacCracken also coordinated the official U.S. Government reviews of several of the assessment reports prepared by the IPCC, and he was a co-author/contributing author for various chapters in the IPCC assessment reports. Dr. MacCracken’s assignment with the Office of the USGCRP ended in September 2002, and he simultaneously retired from LLNL.
Dr. MacCracken is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the American Meteorological Society, the Oceanography Society, the American Geophysical Union, and Sigma Xi.
Links and Publications
Dominican Republic and Climate Change: Future Perspectives
Anthes, R. A., R. W. Corell, G. Holland, J. W. Hurrell, M. C. MacCracken and K. E. Trenberth, 2006: Hurricanes and global warming – Potential linkages and consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 87, 623-628.
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), member of synthesis integration team, 2004: Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, Cambridge University Press, 140 pp.
Houser, S., V. Teller, M. MacCracken, R. Gough, and P. Spears, 2001, Chapter 12: Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for Native Peoples and Homelands, pp. 351-377 in Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, Foundation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 612 pp.
MacCracken, M. C., 2002: Do the uncertainty ranges in the IPCC and US National Assessments adequately account for possibly overlooked climatic influences? Climatic Change 52, 13-23.
MacCracken, M. C., 2002, Global Warming: A Science Overview, pp. 33-48 in The Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Transportation, Workshop summary and Discussion Papers (October 1-2, 2002), US Department of Transportation, Washington DC.
MacCracken, M. C., 2002, Chapter 6: Impacts and adaptation, pp. 81-112 in U. S. Climate Action Report—2002, Third National Communication of the United States of America under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 263 pp.
MacCracken, M. C., 2004: Expert affidavit in Friends of the Earth, Inc., Greenpeace, Inc., City of Boulder, Colorado, City of Oakland, California, City of Arcata, California, and City of Santa Monica, California versus Peter Watson in his official capacity as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and Philip Merrill in his official capacity as President and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, filed with the United States District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, Civ. No. C 02 4106 JSW [posted at http://www.climatelawsuit.org/].
MacCracken, M. C., 2005: Global climate change: A science overview, Catholic Rural Life, 47 (2), 5-10.
MacCracken, M. C., 2005: Climate change: A matter of contending perspectives, Environmental Values, in press. [earlier version of paper]
MacCracken, M. C., 2005: The climatic effects of asteroid and comet impacts: Consequences for an increasingly interconnected society, in Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: Results of an ICSU Workshop, P. Bobrowsky and H. Richman (eds.), Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, in press.
MacCracken, M. C., 2006: Geoengineering: Worthy of Cautious Evaluation, invited comment for Climatic Change, 77, in press
MacCracken, M., E. Barron, D. Easterling, B. Felzer, and T. Karl, 2001, Chapter 1: Scenarios for Climate Variability and Change, pp. 13-71 in Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, Foundation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 612 pp. [downloadable from ]
MacCracken, M. C., E. Barron, D. Easterling, B. Felzer, and T. Karl, 2003: Climate change scenarios for the U. S. National Assessment, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 84, 1711-1723.
MacCracken, M. C., and J. S. Perry (editors), 2002, Encyclopedia of Global and Environmental Change, Volume 1: The Earth System: Physical and Chemical Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, one of five volumes under chief editor T. Munn, John Wiley and Sons, London, 773 pp.
National Assessment Synthesis Team (participating as additional lead author), 2000, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change: Overview Report, U. S. Global Change Research Program, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 154 pp.
Parson, E. A., R. W. Corell, E. J. Barron, V. Burkett, A. Janetos, L. Joyce, T. R. Karl, M. C. MacCracken, J. Melillo, M. G. Morgan, D. S. Schimel, and T. Wilbanks, 2003: Understanding climatic impacts vulnerabilities, and adaptation in the United States: Building a capacity for assessment, Climatic Change, 57, 9-42.
